Former AFL star’s $100 million fortune faces biggest hurdle

Joel Macdonald has been busy since retiring in 2013.Source:News Limited

FORMER AFL star and rookie inductee into the Australian Financial Review’s young rich list Joel Macdonald’s bubble is bursting.

The 33-year-old, whose personal fortune was estimated to be as high as $170 million in December, has enjoyed a meteoric rise since his logistics technology start-up GetSwift was first listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in December, 2016.

Now Macdonald is in the most dangerous fight of his company’s young life after a bombshell revelation over the weekend forced the company into a trading halt and eventual suspension of trade on Wednesday.

The former Melbourne Demons and Brisbane Lions player, with 124 AFL games to his name,

started an alcohol delivery business called LiquorRun during his final AFL season in 2013.

As the business started to boom, Macdonald and his teammate-investors, Rohan Bail and James Strauss, spearheaded a project to deliver real-time delivery tracking software specific to their unique business needs — similar to driver-tracking technology used by Uber and Dominos.

It ended up being a $550m idea, based on market capitalisation of $550 million.

Joel Macdonald in Demons colours.Source:News Limited

In 2017, Macdonald’s company signed a deal worth more than $100 million with a car-parts delivery network in North America.

“It’s those investors who chose to participate in a huge financing for a company still in the very early stages of their development that need to take responsibility,” he said.

“It’s quite frankly embarrassing. Stories like this just hurt the development of the Australian start-up scene. It also shows that there is a long way to go for the ASX to be a great home for our best technology companies.”

It comes after the Melbourne start-up raised more than $75 million in equity in December on the back of the announcement of a deal with retail giant Amazon.

The announcement initially saw GetSwift’s share-price soar more than 80 per cent in the space of a week in December.

With a 22 per cent stake in the company, Macdonald, GetSwift’s founder and managing director, saw his personal wealth climb as high as an estimated $170 million following the announcement.

Joel Macdonald, CEO of online delivery start-up SwiftSource:Supplied

In December, shares in GetSwift were suspended from trade for a day after it announced a deal with Amazon, but provided no further information. The ASX stepped in and requested more detail from the company.

GetSwift later said it was not able to determine the extent of the services to be provided and revenue generated from its agreement with Amazon.

Now the ASX wants further detail about similar deals GetSwift announced with Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Fantastic Furniture and Fruit Box.

The report claims GetSwift made premature revenue forecasts related to the deals.

GetSwift’s recent major deals with Pizza Hut, Lone Star and Yum! brand restaurants (which operates Taco Bell and KFC) — announced in 2017 — are reportedly not being investigated by the ASX.

All the noise and unwanted attention from the ASX is reportedly set to see GetSwift shares dive when trading resumes, according to retail investor trading platforms.

GetSwift on Wednesday requested its shares be suspended from trade, as it had received requests from market operator ASX for responses.

GetSwift said on Wednesday that it expected to provide responses to the ASX before the market opened for trade on Thursday.